


They Grow On You

by quiet__tiger



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 10:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiet__tiger/pseuds/quiet__tiger
Summary: Dick gives Bruce a Christmas present.  Bruce doesn't know what to say.





	They Grow On You

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal Dec. 16th, 2005.

The tree was big, the lights bright, and his coffee hot.  It was the only way Bruce did Christmas, and now his small family was watching him open his next package, instrumental carols playing softly over the radio.

Bruce stared at the pillowesque thing wrapped in tissue paper that Dick had given him.  Picking it up by one deformed little arm, Bruce asked his former ward, “What.  Is it?”

Dick smiled that smile that Bruce knew meant something to the effect of ‘I know something you don’t know and I think I’m being cute.’  “It’s Ice Bat.”

“Who?”

“Ice Bat.  He's an Ugly Doll.”

Bruce hadn’t want to say anything, but yeah, it was.  “And…”

“And they’re really popular right now.”  Bruce cocked an eyebrow to ask if he had ever been known to like anything popular.  “And you like bats.”

“I hate bats.”

Dick sighed, but his eyes still smiled.  “There’s a fine line between love and hate.  Babs thought it was cute.”

Bruce looked skeptically at the soft, blue plush, its huge eyes looking up at him and its four teeth making him think about how much it hurt to be bitten by things with sharp teeth.  The doll was a bit frightening, for a doll.

Dick started talking again as Bruce ran his fingers over the material.  “It’s soft, and you like blue, and I thought it would fit with your theme.”

“My ‘theme’?”

“You have an entire cave full of stuff with ‘Bat’ as its prefix.  Ice Bat just uses it as his suffix.”

A lot of that ‘stuff’ had saved Dick’s life at one point or another, or had been coveted during his teens.  “Uh huh.  Well, thank you, Dick.  It’s certainly nothing I would have gotten for myself.”

“I know.  You hate him.  Trust me, he'll grow on you.  Tim has half of them, and he hated them at first, too.”

“Tim.”

“You know, your sidekick?  Kinda short, really strong?”

“I know who Tim is.  I just didn’t think he collected stuffed toys.”

“I don’t think he consciously started to.  But he liked one, and then Kid Flash got him one, and Superboy, and then I got him another…”

“Well, I’m sure Mr. Ice Bat here will have a good home.”  Bruce glanced imploringly at Alfred, but Alfred had grown less and less helpful the more Dick and Tim got to him.  He only shrugged and smiled.

“I can get you the keychain and miniature versions, too.  They’re cuter.”

Wouldn’t take much.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Later that night, after Tim had stopped by after the huge dinner Alfred prepared and Dick returned to Bludhaven, Bruce dug through the presents he had received.  Slipping the one under his arm, he silently climbed the stairs to his room.

Smiling crookedly, he took Ice Bat and set him in the bookcase on the wall across from his bed.  He really did look good propped next to the hardcover Sherlock Holmes collection.

Dick was right.

The doll *was* growing on him.


End file.
